Miscellaneous Debris, May 2011

The summer movie season is a swimming pool. This is the diving board.

Winter may have the prestige pictures and springtime has the festivals, but for those of us who love watching movies, summer is the time to go. It’s like a trip to the circus, or an amusement park; the winter prestige releases  are like a classroom excursion to the museum and the festivals a Sunday afternoon trip to the eclectic bookstore Uptown (or Midtown, or whatever your city calls that area.)

Here’s our list of news that didn’t get a full post over the last couple of months, but probably deserved it – our commentary on items worth discussing. All opinions are just that, but as always feel free to post your own in the space provided. Thanks, and have a fun holiday weekend.

1. Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life won the Palme D’Or at the 64th annual Cannes Film Festival on May 22, despite a contentious reception that had some people booing its screening while others cheered. By some accounts, the film – about the meaning of life in the cosmos filtered through the life of a 1950s Texas family – is Malick as his most – well, Malick, and audience’s take on it will likely depend on how well they appreciate the writer-director’s meditative style.

Kirsten Dunst won best actress for her starring role in auteur provacateur Lars Von Trier’s apocalyptic thriller Melancholia. French actor Jean DeJardin won best actor, for his performance in the period romance The Artist.

Tree of Life opens May 27 in selected cities; Melancholia opens November 4. As of press time The Artist has no US release date listed on IMDB.

We hear the beaver did great work.

2. Going from controversial success to almost unmitigated failure, director Jodi Foster’s attempt to resuscitate buddy Mel Gibson’s career with the odd melodrama The Beaver opened to just $107,000 in limited release May 8, with subsequent box office so small that distributor Summit Entertainment has scrapped plans for a wide release. The film earned mixed reviews, alongside the predictable speculation about the state of Gibson’s career moving forward.

As a comeback vehicle, The Beaver is probably just too weird: Gibson ‘s last effort, the far more conventional revenge thriller Edge of Darkness, broke even on its $80 million budget in worldwide release.

We were going to post a trailer for The Beaver but the hell with it. Here’s the drug bust scene from Lethal Weapon instead:

Did Riggs every get that Christmas tree? We’ll never know.

Ulrich on L&O:LA

3. As long as we’re on the subject of failure, here’s a recipe for how to tank one of the year’s most promising television dramas: put it on extended hiatus, release the cast member with the organized, devoted fan base, and then reschedule it behind a drama that was doomed almost from its start, runnning the episodes blatantly out of their production order. That’s what NBC had the brains to do with Law & Order: Los Angeles, the latest incarnation of the aging franchise but a worthy successor to the “mothership” original series that the Peacock Network canned last year.

Had the show continued, its breakout star would likely have been Corey Stoll, whose Detective Tomas “TJ” Jaruszalski gave laid-back California mellow a fresh coat of cool. On that note, NBC’s The Event (the show’s ill-starred lead-in) features Jason Ritter, Ian Anthony Dale, Taylor Cole and Sarah Roemer, whom we see as some of the biggest stars of 2013 or so.

4. From the “we should have reviewed this a while back” desk: A&E’s original drama Breakout Kings continues to surprise with its shrewdly intelligent writing, building all its half-dozen interpersonal tensions to a slow boil week by week. The cast’s chemistry, bumpy in the first episodes, has improved as the show nears the end of its first season (to middling ratings).

Jimmy Simpson, formerly the scene-stealing Liam McPoyle on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, brings the best work playing a gambling-addict psychiatrist, and plotlines often pause to let him take center stage with his Hannibal-Lector-gone-geek weirdness. Meanwhile The Wire‘s Domenick Lombardozzi has a beefy intensity that evokes the early work of Gene Hackman, and Laz Alonzo (Avatar) brings retro cool to the center straight-man role.

Breakout Kings‘ season finale airs May 29.

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides had a $90 million opening weekend, the biggest of the year so far, but some analysts wonder if even that amount has Disney shivering its timbers. The studio predicted the film would enjoy a $100 million opener – an amount still less than the openings for the series’ two previous installments – but that analysts likely felt was conservative given the additional revenue from 3-D and IMAX showings.

Already the subject of lukewarm reviews, the film faces stiff competition in the coming weeks for the all-important 18-49 demographic, with The Hangover 2 opening this weekend and X-Men: First Class the week after.

6. A better show than anyone who’s never seen it realizes, FX’s Archer is much more than the genre-spoofing jokes its tame promos would indicate. Not for the faint of heart or gentle of stomach, it’s nevertheless a very smart, very dark comedy that most often recalls the first-season heyday of Arrested Development (partly a small wonder, given the bevy of AD veterans among its voice cast.)

Sterling Archer (H. Jon Benjamin) is the premiere secret agent for the quasi-governmental agency ISIS, run by his domineering, emotionally withholding mother (Jessica Walter) and staffed by a crew of sexual degenerates and deviants (voiced by, among others, Judy Greer and Chris Parnell.) Arrogant but achingly aware that his stunted maturity comes from a miserable childhood, Archer carries out missions with fellow spy and bittersweetheart Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler) while avoiding the machinations of the KGB, rival spy organization ODIN, and pretty much the entire world. Meanwhile the ISIS staff carries on workplace satire that would strip the paint off NBC’s cute/wacky/cute Thursday night sitcoms.

The second season recently concluded, with reruns currently appearing sporadically amid FX’s schedule.

7. With The Dark Knight Rises officially in production as of last week, the film’s official site released this picture of Tom Hardy (Inception) as the monstrous gang boss known as Bane.

In the comics, Bane is a criminal genius who uses a volatile steroid known as Venom to augment his musculature, giving  him incredible strength and terrific rage. Raised from childhood in the Caribbean prison of Pena Dura but eventually dominating its inmates through sheer intimidation, he journeyed to Gotham City to beat that city’s own “ruler by fear” – Batman. In his bid to conquer Gotham’s underworld he fought the hero hand-to-hand in a brutal Batcave-set duel that ended when he snapped Batman’s spine.

Currently reformed, more or less, he works with other villains-for-hire The Secret Six, whose perversely witty book is among the best DC publishes each month. Bane also previously appeared in 1997′s little-loved Batman and Robin, where he was played by the late wrestler Jeep Swenson.

8. Finally, because no one wants to work when the weather is nice, here’s Christian Bale in a clip from the unfairly ignored Harsh Times to help you articulate your workplace frustrations. Just let his words ring through your head when your coworkers annoy or frustrate.

We have a review of this film and several other worth-seeing Bale films in this feature from 2009. Finally, it should go without saying but nothing about his clip is SFW.

We’ll return next week with a review of The Hangover 2. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Primary Green: A Green Lantern Crash Course

A layman’s guide to one of this summer’s most eagerly awaited comics blockbusters.

Already one of the most-hyped films of the summer thanks to weeks of relentless marketing, Green Lantern arrives in theatres with a legion of expectations dogging its trail. The subject of intense scrutiny since the earliest days of its preproduction – and extensive reworkings by Warner Bros during and even after its post-production process – the film has seemed to get better with each new marketing cycle, shifting from the dopey adventure of its earliest previews to a gritty, suspenseful space opera in the tradition of, obviously, Star Wars or Star Trek.

Which suggests that director Martin Campbell and the film’s producers are changing horses in midstream a bit, tweaking the final cut to move it closer to audience tastes: initial response to those earlier previews was lukewarm at best. The film is significant – important, even – for several reasons, especially to publisher DC Comics. A success at the box office will mean the company can build franchises from its second-tier characters (everyone besides Batman and Superman); it’ll also provide another tentpole for the Justice League film that Warner Bros keeps saying it wants to make.

As with Marvel’s currently shownig Thor, the biggest issue facing Green Lantern’s success is his relative obscurity among non-comics (and cartoon) fans; everyone knows Superman and Batman and their origins and histories; fewer know GL’s basics, despite a giant surge in popularity since a 2004 restart of the comics franchise. That surge by and large has made this film possible: similar efforts such an adaptation of DC’s The Flash (ironically a project once connected with star Ryan Reynolds) have languished in development for years.

The following represents some of the more interesting and/or important parts of the Green Lantern mythos, gathered from its seventy-one years of history. All our opinions are just that. For our part, we’re keeping an open mind about the movie – to be honest, we’re keeping it wedged open with a couple of steel bars, using only our willpower.

Hal Jordan wasn’t the first Green Lantern to star in comics.  Though the film centers on test pilot Hal Jordan and his trial by fire into the galaxy-spanning Green Lantern Corps, the first character to bear the GL name was a little more shadowy and gothic. When railroad engineer Alan Scott discovered a piece of the mystical Starheart in the wreckage of a derailed train, he used its otherworldly power to fight crime. Eventually, he joined the Justice Society, comics’ first super hero team.

Scott debuted in All-American Comics in 1940, and remains one of the most popular “Golden Age” characters. He still appears every month in the Justice Society’s comic book alongside other enduring “mystery men,” and has two children who are also heroes.

Hal Jordan, Space Age Alpha Dog. Costumed super heroes experienced a steep drop in popularity after World War II, but rebounded in the late 1950s following the all-but total reinventions of several properties; in most cases the name and powers were similar in this “Silver Age” but everything else became different.

Following a successful revamp of The Flash, in which science and technology were emphasized over mystery and suspense, in 1959 creators John Broome and Gil Kane envisioned Green Lantern as a space cop whose Space Sector 2814 “beat” was Earth and its neighboring solar systems.

Jordan’s daily life was ripped from the headlines: as a brash test-pilot for Ferris Aircraft, he was meant to evoke the then-white hot glamour of Chuck Yeager and the Mercury Seven astronauts. Typical of the Silver Age “less is more” visual aesthetic, his comparatively streamlined costume is supposed to represent aerodynamics and speed. Finally, recurrent love interest Carol Ferris was also his boss, anticipating the gender struggles of the coming two decades.

Kane art from the 1980s

Co-creator Kane is a comics titan. It’s hard to overstate Kane’s importance and stature when discussing comics art. Pioneering realism and artistic grace at a time when the medium was visually still relatively simplistic and utilitarian, his dynamic, movement-centered illustrations played an influence on every artist to come after him.

Later in his career Kane helped lay the groundwork for the the modern graphic novel with his 1971 fantasy epic Blackmark. In the 80s he gave comics a bit of culture by illustrating an adaptation of Richad Wagner’s epic Ring of the Nibelung operatic cycle.

Hal Jordan isn’t always Green Lantern, and vice versa. Comics audiences’ tastes change every few years but often violently revert back, and from time to time Jordan has found himself supplanted by other heroes the book’s editors perceive as more in keeping with shifting trends. Within the larger narrative, these ersatz Lanterns are commonly explained as alternates or replacements while he’s unable to serve the Corps.

Additional Earth-based GL’s include the headstrong, overbearing Guy Gardner (since promoted to the Corps’ version of a SWAT team); architect and former Marine Corps sniper John Stewart; and Los Angeles graphics artist Kyle Rayner. In fact a bitter debate raged for years among Rayner and Jordan fans until DC comics restored Jordan to his initial status as the company’s preeminent Green Lantern.

The Green Lantern Corps is an army of strange aliens and beautiful freaks. GLC creators have traditionally taken advantage of comics’ broader storytelling capacities to include GL’s who aren’t remotely human. Some of the Corps’ stranger members include Rot Lop Fan, a being of pure sound, the sentient plant-man Medphyll, and living diamond Chaselon.

Jordan’s “neighbor” GL’s include fan-favorite “fish-parrots” Tomar-Re and his successor Tomar-Tu of the planet Xudar, whose Sector 2813 included Superman’s world of Krypton; and Arisia Rrab of 2815, a battle-hardened GL who resembles a teenager girl despite having already lived more than two hundred years.

This movie is not Jordan’s debut in other media. A cameo in Justice League Unlimited, two direct-to-DVD animated features and a handful of appearances on the 1980s-era Super Friends cartoon notwithstanding, Jordan’s other screen appearance remains less than auspicious. Actor Howard Murphy donned a whiter shade of green to appear as the Emerald Gladiator in 1979′s Legends of the Superheroes, a pair of NBC specials structured along the formats of traditional variety shows and celebrity roasts.

The shows’ cringe-inducing scripts, as well as production values that might politely be termed modest, kept them out of circulation for years. Nevertheless a DVD collection has recently become available.

Different corps use different colors to harness an “emotional spectrum” of power. Perhaps the biggest recent addition to the larger GL mythos involves the introduction of six additional corps, some of whom are friendly and some others decidedly hostile to the Green Lantern Corps’ mission.

The GLC uses the “emotion” of willpower to fuel their rings’ energy constructs. Their adversaries include the Sinestro Corps, which harnesses the yellow energy of fear (yellow is the one color the lanterns’ rings are ineffectual against) and the Red Lantern Corps that uses rage. More benevolent groups include the Blue Lantern Corps of hope and the Indigo Tribe of compassion.

Here’s the latest trailer, in which Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush) relates the history of the Corps:

Green Lantern opens nationwide June 17.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Mechanic

Statham and Foster spin their wheels in the remake of a Seventies crime genre favorite.

A decade ago, around the time of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven remake, someone involved with the film (maybe the director himself) said you can more easily remake a mediocre film than you can a well-made one. It’s a good theory: presumably the audience is more forgiving of mistakes made in the retrofitting of the story material, and at the same time possibly more eager to embrace improvements. American culture is proudly all about the upgrade, and for better or worse consumers are predisposed by tradition to equate the new with the improved, whether the connection proves true or not.

The target audience of director Simon West’s The Mechanic, a thunderous and messy remake of the little but fondly remembered 1972 Charles Bronson actioner of the same name, won’t give a shit if the film improves or denigrates its predecessor. Why should they? Within the narrow scope of shoot-em-up action films it’s neither remarkable nor terrible, and largely indistinguishable from star Jason Statham’s franchise of Transporter adventures. If you like those films, here’s more of the same.

Statham takes over Bronson’s role as Arthur Bishop, a contract hitman employed by an international company that contracts assassinations, murders, and vengeance killings to its stable of operatives. As Bishop explains, some killings need to be staged to resemble accidents and some need to send a clear message. Both kinds seem to require meticulous planning and preparation, including the opening set piece execution of a vaguely defined South American millionaire: Bishop kills the man in his tightly guarded mansion and then stages an unnecessarily elaborate escape.

Returning to his New Orleans base of operations, he meets with his mentor and friend McKenna (Donald Sutherland) but shortly thereafter learns the company has marked the older man for termination. A company executive (Tony Goldwyn) tells Bishop that McKenna sold information about a mission to a third party, resulting in the deaths of several operatives. Bishop reluctantly agrees to execute McKenna himself, carrying out the hit but staging the event to look like a carjacking.

Mulling over his guilt, he’s reunited with McKenna’s estranged son Stephen (Ben Foster), a ‘neer-do-well with a bad temper and, thanks to his father’s death, an aimless wellspring of rage. Bishop stops Stephen from executing a small time criminal and agrees to train him as an assassin, a regimen that includes buying a chihuahua and loafing around an Uptown coffee shop.

The revelation of those instructions’ hidden purpose, along with the final triple-cross conclusion, offer the only true – if moderate – surprises of the film. The rest is go-through-the-motions shoot-em-up, albeit motions handsomely and engagingly staged by West and his stunt team. Statham has done this enough by now to make it look easy, and the gunfights have a kinetic brutality to them that’s reminiscent – most likely deliberately so – of the early films of John Woo.

Wikipedia tells us the critics reviewing the 1972 version noted both the father-son rivalry between Bishop and Stephen and also a “latent homosexual bond.” But West and this latest version don’t bother with infusing the 2011 version with a murky subtext; the script lets the two men keep their thoughts to themselves tough-guy style; even when Stephen willfully disobeys instructions Bishop is slow to criticize, and their final confrontation outside a gas station is played with a minimum of pathos. It’s a lucky thing Statham and Foster have the laconic acting tradition to fall back upon – watching them open up might prove embarrassing.

As for the performances, as noted above Statham is an old hand at this. Foster, though improved since his dreadful performance in 2007’s 3:10 to Yuma, doesn’t often do more than smirk or act cocky on-camera. Yet his mugging, meant to telegraph detached, contemptuous cool, comes off as bratty next to Statham’s reserved-to-the-point- of-boredom swagger. Swedish actress Mini Anden gets the only substantive female part, playing Bishop’s prostitute love interest; their sex scene early in the film is a textbook example of “gratuitous nudity.” (I’m guessing her character is a prostitute, though she sometimes acts like a girlfriend; Bishop gives her money and she doesn’t know his name.)

Eventually The Mechanic doesn’t amount to anything more than a place-holding link in the careers of its two stars.  Statham will certainly make more action movies, and for whatever reasons Foster seems on his way to becoming a durable screen presence as well. The Mechanic isn’t a bad film: it’s not a disappointment or travesty to the original, and it’s not a good film or improvement either. It’s just in the middle all the way around, until the last five minutes when things get very hairy and very unpredictable all at once. Now with its home video release you can watch those first, skipping to the best part. Everything else will be the same when you go back.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: The Killer Inside Me

Michael Winterbottom’s notorious thriller is troubled, frustrating, mystifying.

After more than two decades of filmmaking, Michael Winterbottom remains one of the most fascinating and yet frustrating directors working. His films are routinely energetic, ambitious, stuffed with memorable performances – actors routinely do their best work when participating in one of his projects – and his subject matter is never less than inventive and intriguing. So why aren’t his films, as complete works, better than they are?

The Killer Inside Me continues the recurrent trend that began with 1997′s Welcome To Sarajevo and continues through a half-dozen or so good-but-not-great films including 24 Hour Party People, The Claim, and Code 46. A great idea for a film, handsomely and adroitly cast, it never quite rises to its potential but instead languishes in unresolved issues and ideas that don’t quite work out to their best conclusions. It’s hobbled, too, by an abrupt and clumsy tonal shift midway through the third act that leaves its ending particularly disappointing.

It’s based on a novel by Jim Thompson, whose other works – The Getaway, The Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet - stand stark even in the bleak company of the hard-boiled genre. The story centers on Lou Ford, a soft-spoken sheriff’s deputy in small-town Centreville, Texas of the 1950s. Ford is amiable, gentlemanly, and deliberate, obedient to his alcoholic boss (Tom Bower) and content to live in the house left him by  his late doctor father. Some time previous Ford’s adoptive brother died under mysterious circumstances, following lurid innuendo concerning his activities with a child.

When Ford is assigned to investigate the activities of local prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), his barely restrained sadism begins to percolate. Actually a sociopath comfortable with his own amorality but happy to disguise it beneath a mild-mannered veneer, he embarks on an affair of rough sex with Joyce while romancing, ostensibly for the sake of appearances, playful but adoring town debutante Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson.) Ford tells himself, and the audience through first-person voiceover narration, that he loves Joyce but can use her to bring about the revenge he’s wanted since his brother’s death.

That revenge involves manipulating her into conning the son (Jay R. Ferguson) of the local construction magnate (Ned Beatty) that Ford blames for his brother’s death. But the revenge is only the excuse, it seems, for Ford to murder the magnate’s son in cold blood and then savagely beat Joyce to death, under a cover of framing the son for her murder but keeping the cash that the son believed would allow him to skip town with Joyce. The resulting brutal violence is central to the film’s greatest ambition but also creates its many failings.

The long, anguished scene in which Ford pummels Joyce, and a later similar scene involving Amy, caused a cyclone of complaints upon the film’s premiere at Sundance and elsewhere, and not without reason – they’re almost impossible to watch without revulsion. Joyce’s death manages, in brutal clarity, to reverse the moral center of the film, turning Ford from interesting if unsympathetic anti-hero (we get small, flashback hints to his true nature several times in the film) to contemptible villain. Affleck seldom changes the temperature of his performance, keeping Ford at the same spacey, plodding cool in almost every scene.

Cleverly, Thompson’s story – adapted by writer/director John Curran – builds a supporting cast that can slide into the vacuum of sympathy created by Ford’s curdling: the well-intentioned if useless sheriff, his earnest deputy (Matthew Maher), a county attorney (Simon Baker), the construction boss suspicious of Ford’s role in the killing, the union organizer who often seems to see through Ford’s “bullshit”; and of course Amy herself, who plans to elope with Ford in the immediate future.

But except for Amy, none of the characters is given the opportunity to establish themselves as presences in the story independent of their relation to Ford; they are not persons themselves so much as types that Ford must evade or manipulate in his day-to-day existence, and in their normalcy they seem scant opposition to his ruthlessness. That’s probably exactly the point Thompson’s book wanted to make (I haven’t read it), that normal civilization is powerless in the face of true evil  – a lesson that’s apparently common in Texas, the original no country for old men. Still, that basic imbalance effectively allows Ford to gambol through the film with no clear threat of retribution. It’s frightening, but not in a way that’s especially rewarding to watch.

Winterbottom’s intention may have been to disconcert the viewer rather than entertain all along; there’s plenty to suggest that the entire purpose is to repulse rather than garner sympathy for Ford’s monstrous depravity. If only the last twenty minutes or so held up that level of malicious drive. Following Amy’s death, music and staging coincide to bring a bizarre and awkward sense of camp to several scenes, including a poorly staged chase sequence through town whose indifferent conclusion grows annoying upon reflection. The equally off-putting ending, rife with contortions that set up weirdly symbolic overlays to the story but that run all over the place tonally, virtually collapses the preceding story into dissolution.

Regarding the performances, Ford is a dangerous part to undertake, and it’s hard to imagine other contemporary leading men hazarding such a risky commitment (imagine Brad Pitt doing something like this.) But Affleck’s determination to make his character casually sociopathic keeps the emotional intensity at a level less than what it needs to bring the film. He also never allows much insight into Ford’s inner psyche, and though again that may have aligned with Thompson or Winterbottom’s design ultimately it makes his performance an important question mumbled in a loud room.

The two women are both well cast, if for different reasons. Hudson has made a career of playing the love interest in comedies with the weight of pollen grains, so watching her act both randy and then victimized has a shock value that works forcibly to the film’s advantage. Alba received a lot of negative press for her performance, including a Razzie award, but she’s adequate and at times even pitiably affecting in a part that doesn’t allow her to do much except get ravished or beaten. Of the male co-stars, Bill Pullman steals scenes (as usual) as a lawyer who comes to Ford’s rescue once the plot steers itself into a corner. Maher, an actor who ought to be seen more, is compelling as the last deputy left  in town to represent real law.

Speaking of the film’s graphic violence against women, Winterbottom told The New York Daily News that the story exists in a “kind of parallel world” that he was “drawn into.” Yet for as much texture as the film has – it’s a visceral, immersive world that irrepressibly sucks you in – there’s almost nothing by way of context or theory to explain Ford’s implacable rage and madness. The resultant displays come off too casual, too callous, as a direct consequence.  And perhaps because the violence is savaged upon women who love and who need to be loved, audiences will expect and for that matter probably have a right to expect closure or at least insight. The women’s performances are good enough that they’ll want to know why; in the absence of such the banality of Ford’s evil inevitably blurs with a lack of articulation of the film’s – and its creators’ – ideas.

They’ll come away disappointed. Ultimately full of problems and dark promise alike, The Killer Inside Me takes us through the life and mind of someone almost impossibly evil but loses itself before offering anything like a way out.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Thor

Kicking off the summer movie season with a thrilling, uncomplicated adventure.

Thor may finally settle a debate about Marvel Studios, one that’s brewed for years now: whether the company can build a successful film out of its lesser known characters, following earlier thuds such as Elektra and Ghost Rider. Hardly a household name and not even one of Marvel’s most popular characters among its devoted fanbase, mainstream audiences may approach this film with even heavier doses of skepticism than those earlier misfires. The almost simplistic story of an upstart Norse godling roaming the Earth in combat with his evil half-brother Loki can seem simplistic at best and, honestly, a tad goofy at worst.

Nevertheless, director Kenneth Branagh and his production team  must have taken those pitfalls as a challenge. Despite a hefty run-time that sometimes feels a bit belabored and a romantic subplot that often threatens to become superfluous, the film is a perfect opening volley for a summer movie season swamped by superheroes. Here’s hoping that they’re all as enjoyable as this fast-paced, smartly dumb adventure.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), his parents Odin and Frigga (Anthony Hopkins and Rene Russo) and half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) rule the other-dimensional megalopolis of Asgard, the highest of the universe’s Nine Realms. In centuries past they had defended Midgard (their name for Earth) from an invading army of frost giants, until Odin pushed the monsters back to their own realm of Jotunheim. In the present day the Asgardians and giants maintain an uneasy peace guaranteed by Odin’s supervision of an artifact (more or less a giant battery) containing the bulk of the giants’ power.

Branagh keeps the back story moving fluidly and quickly, zooming past derivations from The Lord of the Rings series (which are unmistakable, even if possibly coming from the same source) and getting the story into the present day. When a frost giant raid on the Asgardians’ armory spoils the celebration announcing Thor as Odin’s designated successor, the young prince determines to lead a counterattack into Jotunheim despite his father’s explicit orders. Joined by his friends Sif (Jaimie Alexander), Volstagg (Ray Stevenson), Hogun (Tadanobu Asano), and Fandral (Josh Dallas), Thor crosses the rainbow bridge leading out of the Asgardians’ fortifications and into Jotunheim, assisted by the city’s stoic gatekeeper Heimdall (Idris Elba).

The point of the mission, at least for the script, is to establish Thor’s fighting credentials. The film is shrewd in understanding that, as a character, Thor lacks the cultural universality of Spider-Man and Superman or the simplicity of the Iron Man concept (Watch Green Lantern hit the same speed bump next month.) The early battle scenes, full of flying bodies and sharp weapons, demonstrate the young goldling’s skill before establishing his character dept in the second act. The action scenes are thrilling, though predictable, as is Thor’s banishment to Earth for his impudence.

He crash-lands in New Mexico, where he’s found by astrophysicist Jane Foster (Nathalie Portman) and her mentor (Stellan Skarsgard) and intern (Kat Dennings.) Foster monitors the atmospheric disturbances over the desert, looking for evidence of wormholes in time and space. Meanwhile residents of the local town stumble upon the crash site of Thor’s war hammer, sent after him by Odin and cursed to resist any attempts at lifting except by those worthy to wield its power. The impact crater quickly gets locked down by SHIELD, the same spy agency so prevalent in the Iron Man films and led here by those movies’ Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg).

Hemsworth remains convincing in taking the upstart god from brash and entitled to self-sacrificing and mature. His chemistry with Portman helps, as does the easy friendship he shares with his Asgardian compatriots; Hiddleston is equally effective as the silver-tongued trickster God, though the script takes his characterization a step further in providing a more classical motivation for his treachery. Odin’s family is conflicted and at odds against itself in the film, making for meaty intrigue that plays directly to Branagh’s Shakespearean strengths. But ultimately it’s Hemsworth’s show, he and Hiddleston’s, and the two make solid counterpoints to one another.

Loki eventually gains the upper hand, supplanting Odin on the throne and sending a towering metal giant named The Destroyer to kill Thor and his friends, leading to the film’s climactic battle.  The fight between the lumbering destroyer and the determined thunder god comes closer to the Tony Stark-Obadiah Stane duel of the first Iron Man than the comparative anti-climaxes found in Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk.

Just don’t expect closure. Thor the movie, resting as it does on the franchise trajectory leading to next summer’s The Avengers, has to keep its ending open not only for its own sequels but for that coming film crossover. (The much-reported appearance here of longtime comics Avenger mainstay Hawkeye doesn’t satisfy, exactly, but doesn’t disappoint, either.) The film drags on a bit too long near the end as it winds down all its moving parts, and a final scene between Odin and his two sons drags for feeling perfunctory. Hiddleston does what he can, however, making Loki pitiable in defeat, however temporary.

CGI-rendered exotic worlds are a commonplace in current cinema, but the production design and sets displayed here are staggering, particularly the Asgard and its many hallowed, echoing chambers. By contrast, the New Mexico desert community is simple and Modernist in a backlot kind of realism, a town seemingly full of chrome diners and Atomic Age facades, dotted with references to the characters’ histories.  

The after-credits preview, incidentally, establishes what’s likely the MacGuffin of the Avengers movie while validating a theory many filmgoers will likely concoct about Dr. Foster’s mentor Dr. Selvig. As a teaser goes, if you’re familiar with the object displayed it’s a great story twist. Those not familiar with the item in question will be less amused.

- Michael Kabel

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Updated: Seven Lesser Known Comic Book Adaptations

Not every comic-to-screen leap was a blockbuster success.

The comic book movie gold rush is in full swing. This summer no less than four of the studios’ tentpole releases draw inspiration from comics, and speculation and surveillance of upcoming projects including Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film and Joss Whedon’s The Avengers routinely fuel top-of-the update online news. Meanwhile Nolan and Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot, The Man of Steel, continues to announce unexpected and enviable casting decisions.

This image has nothing to do with the article. Its just too strange not to share.

Hollywood has gone to the comics well time and time again since the genre first gained notoriety in the early 1940s, most often for low- or mid-budget fare aimed at children and teens. And for every attempt that hit its box office or audience reception target, there are probably three adaptations that tanked, fell victim to restrictive budgets, or just couldn’t garner enough public interest to build a devoted cult fan base.

We’re sure a few of the following are sentimental favorites to forgiving fans of their respective inspirations. (We like The Flash TV series.) Some aren’t bad, considering their limited resources, and some had unrealized potential. And one or two are terrible. But they’re all from comic books, for better or worse.

Sable (TV series) Premiered November 1987; lasted seven episodes. Based on the First Comics series by longtime Green Arrow writer-artist Mike Grell, Sable followed the exploits of freelance mercenary Jon Sable (Lewis Van Bergen) who worked days as an author of children’s books. Rene Russo, very early in her career, played his girlfriend Eden Kendall.

The clip below shows its noirish promise, even if the show’s “alpha dog adventurer helps client of the week” conceit seems kinda passe now.

Steel (Movie) Released August 15, 1997; total U.S. box office: $1.7 million. In his own DC Comics series and in the Justice League comics and cartoon, Steel is a brilliant engineer and inventor who dedicates himself to defending good after Superman saves his life. So what better “actor” to convey such intellectual and moral strength than human marketing platform Shaquille O’Neal? Judd Nelson played the bad guy, while Richard Roundtree (Shaft) appeared as Uncle Joe.

Though admittedly the film carried a modest $16 million budget, “Shaq Steel” still looks as if he swallowed an electromagnet and walked through a junkyard:

Dr. Strange (TV movie) Premiered September 6, 1978. Clad in a snaredrum-tight Disco perm and piles of gold jewelry, New York psychiatrist Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten) trains to be Earth’s new “Sorcerer Supreme” and rescue a young woman from the evil sorceress Morgan LeFay (Arrested Development’s Jessica Walter).

Intended as the pilot to a television series that never happened, the telefilm featured Marvel Comics’ honcho Stan Lee as a consultant.

Supergirl (Movie) Released November 21, 1984; total U.S. Box Office: $15 million. For years the poster child for misbegotten comic adaptations, Supergirl was rushed into production after the success of the first two Superman films but struggled for distribution after Superman III flopped. Nevertheless, expanded versions released on DVD have clarified its choppily-edited story and somewhat repaired its reputation.

Peter O’Toole, Mia Farrow, and Faye Dunaway make the supporting cast pretty top-heavy, while underused 80s actress Helen Slater (Ruthless People) makes her debut as super-cousin Kara Zor-El.

Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV Movie) Premiered May 26, 1998. A decade before Samuel L. Jackson’s turns in Iron Man and Iron Man 2, David Haselhoff starred in this low-budget TV movie about Marvel Comics’ Man from U.N.C.L.E. riff Nick Fury. The superspy and his former love Valentine Fontaine (Lisa Rinna) take on rival organization HYDRA for possession of a deadly virus. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight scribe David Goyer wrote the script.

The Hoff plays the hyper-macho Fury as… The Hoff with an eyepatch. Watch how S.H.I.E.L.D.’s flying headquarters looks like a basement steam room somewhere. (actual video begins about 23 seconds into clip.)

The Flash (TV Series) Premiered September 20, 1990; lasted 21 episodes. CBS brought the Scarlet Speedster to the small screen apparently motivated by the runaway success of Batman the year before. A TV movie pilot got the family friendly series off and running, but constant schedule shifts and pre-emptions for Gulf War news coverage kept it from building an audience.

Still, The Flash’s (John Wesley Shipp) costume has aged well, as have the special effects. The script quality suffered as the season wore on, however, though fan favorite guests stars like Mark Hamill, Tim Thomerson and Jeffrey Combs frequently livened things up. The series is even collected in a no-frills DVD package.

Captain America (TV movie) Premiered January 19, 1979. An attempt to update the character for the Evil Kenievel/motorcycle years of the 70s, this adaptation featured the original Captain America’s son trying to stop terrorists from detonating a hydrogen bomb on Phoenix, Arizona.

There’s almost nothing about the clip below that doesn’t feel dated, especially the ersatz Cap’s costume and the long, loving takes of motorcycle stunts. A sequel TV movie, released just eleven months later, offered a comparatively more comics-accurate uniform and included Christopher Lee as its villain.

Marvel Studios’ Thor opens nationwide this Friday.

- Michael Kabel